forum Avoiding Aussie Sterotypes?

Started December 26, 2018 by @Leiko

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I got a Aussie imigrant, thick accent, black boy hair, and she's white, are these sterotypes? and are there any I should avoid?

Okay Shrimp on the barbie avoid that. Aussies like vegemite they aren't addicted to it. Don't make them masters of the bush. VB is piss no-one drinks it unless they are hard Bogan (That's redneck in aussie) People here drink Tooheys. You don't chug, you skull it. theses are just phrases. I'll come up with more

Thank you! but what does master of the bush mean?

Australian here! What do you mean by ‘black boy hair’?

Your character’s accent will differ depending where in Australia she grew up. The Sydney accent sounds slightly more British, and often a country accent will be stronger and sound more stereotypically ‘Australian’ than one from a suburban area. Unless your character has been cut off from all recent books and movies, she’ll be familiar with common American accents, slang and spelling.

When her family emigrated will have a big difference on her accent. Did they move to America when she was 5 and send her to a local school? Her parents will still have their original accent, but she’s likely to sound just like her friends when she’s around them. Did they emigrate when she was 16? Then she’ll probably have kept her accent, though it may have mellowed a bit. Did she emigrate as an adult? She might have her original accent, she might not. My sister is dating a guy with a Malaysian-Australian-American accent and when she talks with him her accent shifts to match his. (It’s weird.)

If she grew up in an Australian city:

• She probably had swimming lessons in primary school
• She probably wore a uniform
• She’s used to the school year starting at the beginning of February

If she grew up in the bush (bush is our word for places that aren’t populated)

• She may have been homeschooled
• She’s used to long car trips
• She’s probably been taught what to do around snakes
• If she was on a farm and older than 14 she can probably drive - but in Australia we drive on the left side of the road.

“Master of the bush” refers to someone being really good at surviving outdoors and knowing all about Australian plants and creatures. Think of Steve Irwin and his family. Most rural Australians know what to do around snakes and how to recognise the two most dangerous spiders, and lots of us love camping, but not many could locate edible food in the outback and even fewer could wrangle a crocodile.

Treat her like a person first and an Australian second. Teenage Australians are typically more globalised that the older generations due to the internet. This is under the assumption that you are American btw, but Australian teenagers use the same language as American teenagers, and act relatively similarly. Though do take into account the above responses as well.

Thank you so much! I was wondering if anyone might look over my character plz? Dawn Lee

The most popular hair colour (as in the most people have it) in Australia would be a brownish-blonde and most popular eye colour being blue or brown.

The accent in thicker in Western Australia than say Sydney or something and honestly in country WA it could be so bad that you might not get what they're saying.

We use the British spelling and British (I think) terms so like "nappy" instead of "diaper", "chips" instead of "fries"

A lot of Australians are quite tan (but it depends).

I'm probably a bit late but I wanted to contribute some qualities and things my bogan friends and I have in common (although some of these might very stereotypical whoOps) :

My whiter friends know they burn really easily in the warmer seasons, many of them still refuse to wear sunscreen because they say it feels icky. This has resulted in lots of freckles on their shoulders.

Some of our parents would have let us start drinking at around 14. Lolly water is a pretty common name for overly sweet drinks, like cruisers. Something I've learned from parties I've been to is that there is always at least one person who criticizes other peoples drink choices, they're always the first to get wasted and start raiding the esky for everybody elses "gross" drinks. If it's a BYO drinks party, they almost never pay the people back for the drinks they stole. Most of our bogan parties involve fires.

If her parents were born before 1974 she might know how to measure in Miles, Feet, and Inches; and also in the metric unit. My dad had been taught the old system before Australia officially made the change to the metric unit, and he sometimes slips up and will tell me something is 20 foot, rather than 6 meters.

She's probably been in a car that's hit a kangaroo or two. They do a lot of damage to little cars, and even big cars without bumper bars. If she prefers little cars to say, a ute (a pickup truck) she probably grew up in some sort of town or city.

My english teacher went to America for two years, and learned that we're usually pretty understandable, except in a few cases. All Australians would know what a battery was, some Americans would get confused if an accented person asked around Walmart for bat-trees instead of bat-er-rees. It's a little stereotypical but even Australians with very faint accents still have accents. Most Australians wouldn't blink at an American accent unless it was very redneck because we hear it all the time on television and social media.

Your character would 100% know that a pickup truck is a ute, but she would probably still call it a ute. The same way she might refer to her flip-flops as thongs without batting an eyelid. She would also know that in America a thong is underwear. We also call thongs thongs. An Esky is a cooler. Popsicles are Icy-poles. Golden Gaytimes are not what you might think.

A lot of the more bogan bogans are fond of saying "she'll be right." You accidentally bogged your gumboots? She'll be right. You gave a drunk girl a hug and she tipped her drink all over your back? She'll be right. Your friends are stressing over an essay they haven't started? She'll be right.

We don't have cafeterias in our schools. Sometimes birds fly into classrooms and fly around frantically for a bit. If a spider is crawling on the roof there becomes three types of people; the people who freak out like omg there's a spider ew gross; the people who really don't care, they might say she'll be right; and the people who take off their shoes and throw it at the spider - bonus points if the spider falls on/near one of the people who freak out.

~ a bogan.